Growing threat: Infections like C. difficile are becoming increasingly difficult to treat as bugs become more resistant to antibiotics, leaving millions vulnerable

The rise of drug-resistant superbugs will drag the health service back ‘to the early 19th century’, Britain’s most senior medical adviser has warned.

Unless urgent action is taken, the ‘ticking timebomb’ of growing antibiotic resistance could leave millions vulnerable to untreatable bugs within a generation.

This could make even routine operations such as hip surgery deadly, said Chief Medical Officer Professor Dame Sally Davies.

In an attempt to tackle the problem, GPs will be ordered to prescribe fewer antibiotics.

While infections are becoming increasingly difficult to beat, no new class of antibiotic has been discovered since 1987. In contrast, a new infection emerges on an almost yearly basis.

Dame Sally said the ‘catastrophic threat’ from infections resistant to frontline antibiotics is so serious that she has asked the Government to put antibiotic resistance on the national risk register – ranking it alongside a large-scale terrorist attack or flu pandemic.

‘That is one way of getting central and cross-government action internationally,’ she said. ‘It should be [on the register] because this is a growing problem. And if we don’t get it right, we will find ourselves in a health system not dissimilar to the early 19th century at some point.

‘If we don’t act now, any one of us could go into hospital in 20 years for minor surgery and die because of an ordinary infection that can’t be treated by antibiotics. And routine operations like hip replacements or organ transplants could be deadly because of the risk of infection.’

Acknowledging that ‘global action’ must be taken, she said: ‘This is an international threat.’

In the past five years, the number of cases of blood poisoning from antimicrobial resistant (AMR) forms of E. coli – which is twice as fatal as the normal bug – has gone up 60 per cent.

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The drug-resistant gut bug alone, which is picked up in hospital in half of cases, could be responsible for up to 2,500 deaths in 2011 – more than MRSA and C. difficile combined.

And a deadly strain of tuberculosis which cannot be dealt with by most treatments has trebled in Britain in little over a decade.

Figures from the Health Protection Agency (HPA) show that instances of ‘multidrug resistant’ tuberculosis were 81 in 2011, up from just 28 in 2000, with around half of the patients dying.

Warning: Chief Medical Officer Professor Dame Sally Davies has said that even routine operations such as hip surgery could become deadly due to growing antibiotic resistance

Cases of extensively-resistant TB, which resists almost all types of drugs, have also emerged in the UK, with 12 in the past two years – as many as in the previous 15 years.

Another worrying trend is the rise in infections resistant to powerful antibiotics called carbapenems, the last line of treatment to tackle the most serious infections.

Figures from the HPA show samples testing positive for resistance to the drug have gone up more than 250-fold in the past decade, from three in 2003 to 800 in 2012.

Warning that ‘widespread’ AMR would be an ‘apocalyptic scenario’, Dame Sally has called for improved protection of our current stock of antibiotics, better incentives for the pharmaceutical industry to develop new drugs, and improved hygiene in hospitals.

But with antibiotics liberally used in agriculture, and available over the counter in many countries, these efforts will be undermined without a united global effort.

In 2010, infectious diseases accounted for 7 per cent of all deaths and 4 per cent of all potential years of life lost in England.

They also lose the economy a staggering £30billion a year in direct costs to the NHS and indirect costs to industry in terms of lost work hours.

Emeritus Professor Richard James, former director of the centre for healthcare associated infections at the University of Nottingham, called for ‘effective antibiotic stewardship to prevent the overuse/misuse of antibiotics’.

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Superbugs 'will send the health service back to 19th century': Even routine surgery could become deadly, warns top medical adviser